I went to a Q&A with Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service (SNS) and took down some direct and near-direct quotes. Mark is unique for sharing fairly specific opinions; right or wrong, that’s rare. Notes are chronological over 90 minutes. I tried not to take any comments out of context.
Unemployment: “Economy has split” “Second-order problems caused by joblessness” “Large sea anchor attached to the American economy”
Currencies: “Old religion: all currencies traded on open markets” “China and Japan will reverse” past positions (now want weak currencies; US not buying and they are starting to sell to local consumers) Currency buyers and sellers are nations now, making entirely deliberate choices
IP in Asia: “You will notice that IP is not strongly protected in Asia, and that is where all the action is now” “Don’t bring the Coke recipe”
Q4 2009: “Q4 is being underrated by almost everyone” “netbook will be the best selling format ever” “I think it’s going to be Windows 7” (vs. Ubuntu) “huge Christmas” “PC sales will be positive”
FCC: “Current FCC commissioner is great” (Genachowski)
USD Inflation: how to hedge against the dollar: buy tin for Peruvian shanties (joke) inflation a risk for many or all global currencies, not just USD “total liquidity pool was $36 trillion, and doubled it in 6 years” “huge car wreck that has to come up .. they all know it” “no one has ever done it [quantitative easing] right, so let’s do it now” (central bankers perspective)
How He’d Distribute SNS in 2009: still probably use email, but hate spam, and still growing problem is identifying senders correctly, and “multiple levels of knowing one another” “it’s not Facebook” “Someone’s going to figure out what David Anderson [CEO of Sendmail] couldn’t do”
Peak Oil & Energy: “there is no peak oil” “that little scam [peak oil]” “need consistent high price for oil. I’m fine with $80 plus or minus $10 for 10 years” “pricing umbrella to convert to something else” (besides petroleum) “ultimately I think energy ought to be free”
Countries as Investment Opportunities: “Australia .. Canada” “I hate Russia” “very careful elsewhere” of Russia (later): “all there is is corruption, kleptocracy, and resources”
Heathcare: “heathcare is destroying the competitiveness of our businesses” “what killed GM” (if you asked them) “I would get rid of all heath insurance companies .. I would dissolve them” “I feel no fear from starting from scratch”
What Problems & Opportunities Keep You Awake at Night?: “market manipulation” “inability of nation to respond to problems” most important trend: “about 2 billion people rise up from UN poverty level of $1/day .. to $2/day or $4/day”
Boeing: “I think Boeing is dead man walking” used to know “never to take crowd jewels of IP outof the country” “EADS has forced them to this” competitors will “all be 10 years [behind]” .. “sounds like General Motors to me” “biggest customer just became biggest competitor”
Smartphones (iPhone specifically): “Steve’s done the world a favor by striking this deal with AT&T” “the best software platform we’ve ever dreamed of” (smartphones)
Africa: “I don’t know” (how to make it self-sustaining)
American Empire: “Yes we are in the decline of the American empire” “we deserve what we got” “we aren’t as smart as we think we are” “our promise is so high and our achivement is so low”